‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Broadway Review: Growing up and growing old in a musical explosion

One of the most unlikely, exciting and moving musicals to hit New York in years, Kimberly Akimbo opens on Broadway tonight and has lost none of its immense charm since its Off-Broadway debut the year it won almost every critics award won. had to be swept.

Opening tonight at the Booth Theater with the original Off-Broadway cast intact, the wonderful Victoria Clark directing the very fine cast, Kimberly Akimbo remains a stunner, a sly, quirky, eccentric work of art transformed into a crowd-pleaser by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire’s riveting book and lyrics, Jeanine Tesori’s delightful music that, how Kimberly Akimbo himself, works himself into your heart with a gaiety that both conceals and ultimately strengthens his serious ambitions. Add to this a successful cast of singing actors, ranging from young newcomers to stage veterans, who work together with an ease and chemistry that is evident from the start and only grows stronger until an emotional and deeply satisfying conclusion.

Directed by Jessica Stone and choreographed by Danny Mefford, Kimberly Akimbo tells the story of young Kimberly Levaco, a 16-year-old high school student who, due to a rare genetic aging disorder, is less like her classmates and more like her grandmothers. Played by 60-year-old Clark (a 2005 Tony winner for The light on the piazza), this Kimberly is a remarkable stage creation, emotionally believable as an adolescent (and without the sticky affections commonly used by adults playing children), but with the strained optimism and obvious concern of a person who knows that her time come. . , a knowledge engraved on every line of Clark’s face.

Based on the blueprint of his earlier non-musical piece of the same name Kimberly Akimbo – an explanation of the title soon – follows both the family and school life of its heroine. In her dysfunctional home, Kimberly whips up cereal for her self-obsessed hypochondriac mother, Pattie (a wonderfully funny Allie Mauzey), whose arms are in casts from a recent—and presumably unnecessary—carpal tunnel surgery. Oh, and Patti is very, very pregnant, a fortunate circumstance that everyone, especially Kimberly, recognizes for what it is: “I want this one to be perfect,” Patti gushes with barely a second thought.

Kimberly’s father, Buddy (Steven Boyer, Mauzey laughs with laughter and cruelty with cruelty) is an alcoholic who can’t seem to keep even the simplest of promises to the woman he once loved and the daughter he so clearly does. We first meet Buddy when he arrives hours late to pick up Kimberly from her lonely visit to the local ice rink.

Moments later, we meet Kimberly’s aunt Debra (a tour de force Bonnie Milligan), whose life of petty crime has left her homeless and in the basement of Levaco, where she hatches her next bird (something involving strange chemicals, ‘ a stolen mailbox, and stolen checks – all will be clear soon).

Kimberly’s medical diagnosis is both a literal condition and a metaphor for all children who have to grow up too fast to care for the damaged adults in their lives. Surprisingly, this double feature play is not nearly as constructed as the description might suggest.

At school, Kimberly is an outcast to say the least, less an object of ridicule or bullying and more of curiosity. However, most of the time she is just invisible. We meet four of her classmates at this track (so well played by Nina White, Michael Iskander, Olivia Elease Hardy and Fernell Hogan), themselves an uncool quartet of quirks and secret desires. The group’s only goal – well, apart from the obviously doomed pursuit of romance each has for one of the others – is to raise enough money to buy them glittering costumes dream women Song they want to do in a school music competition. Aunt Debra thinks there are some easy choices to make.

And finally Seth (young Justin Cooley in remarkable New York debut), a tuba-playing, elf-talking nerd who makes even the other outcasts look like kings and queens of the ball. Seth, whose obsession with anagrams turns Kimberly Levaco into Cleverly Akimbo, is a motherless and definitely fatherless child whose occasional verbal callousness – “You know, when I first saw you in the cafeteria, I thought you were a new lunch lady. Isn’t that funny?” — can’t hide a sweet innocence that makes him nervous about asking Kimberly to participate in a science project: Each couple must choose a disease and submit a class report. Before his time, thinking about it, Kimberly agrees with Seth’s idea: you will give a presentation to the class about Kimberly’s rare genetic disorder.

This story plays out – with outcomes that are humorous, heartbreaking and life-changing for all involved – along with a fun but slightly more tense plot: Aunt Debra recruits Kimberly and her five new friends into a check-laundering, bank-fraud scheme, a scheme that niece used to look like a lovely old lady.

Any disbelief at the ease with which these kids lead a life of crime is worth watching. Just listen to the lyrics of “Better” as Debra shares her life philosophy with the impressionable nerds. Set to a deafening powerhouse tune that makes you think you’re starting with an inspiring interlude of the show’s signature tune, the gorgeous Milligan sings an excellent darkly comic number. Check out a typical autobiographical verse:

I met a lady… with dementia.
she was old
she was cute
She was legally blind. She needed a roommate. I needed a room.

I didn’t have a job
she was crazy

You should have seen the rings she wore.
Let me underline
that they were beautiful.
She gave me all the rings she wore. Yes, she thought I was her daughter, but You made my pussy life…better

Your eager, newly recruited gang eats it up. Us too. Milligan is irresistible.

“Better” is just one of the musical highlights of the charming score. Tesori (according to the work she did on the astute Caroline or change), and you Shrek the musical Copywriter Lindsay-Abaire Stuff Kimberly Akimbo with showstopper after showstopper, most equal parts ridiculously funny and tear-jerking. To pick just a few: Kimberly’s increasingly extravagant (and intentionally impossible) list of improbable requests for the Make-A-Wish Foundation (“Make a Wish”); her early duet with Seth (“Anagram”), which refers to feelings they’re not quite sure where to put (“I like the way you see the world.” She finds herself meeting Seth. think. “I like your point of view. A little smart. A bit strange. something wrong“); and there’s the excellent “The Inevitable Turn”, in which a seemingly enjoyable (and rare) family dinner turns sour (“Everything is going well, then it changes so fast. A glimpse, a joke, a magic from the past that burns. Give the salt, pour the mud. Cut the meat, drain the blood. Turn…)

The final song is performed around a slowly rotating dinner table as the family dinner descends into chaos and revelation, a fine example of Stone’s clever direction and David Zinn’s versatile homeschool ice rink sets. The late 1990s setting is never overstated, but Sarah Laux’s costume design is perfect without resorting to comics, never more so than with Kimberly’s wardrobe, a casual teenage outfit that Clark so comfortably inhabits. There is a brief moment where we see Kimberly in a different light and it takes the audience’s breath away.

As the musical reaches its dark, breathtaking and life-affirming – but not quite what you think – conclusion, Kimberly Akimbo treats us to a series of images we won’t soon forget (the video projection contributions by Lucy Mackinnon, the lighting by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew and the impeccable sound design by Kai Harada cannot be overstated). These final moments follow the unspoken promises made during production Kimberly Akimbo and it’s all a little weird, slightly offbeat characters will get all the compassion and respect and clear scrutiny they deserve. promise kept. Kimberly Akimbo is a triumph.